For those who didn’t get a word of that, I’m sorry for mixing my metaphors; it’s that time of the afternoon when my first few daily rounds of caffeine abandon me and my head goes to mush. I’m of course referring firstly to the Aesop’s fables (I hope they still teach those to the kids in school?); secondly to the wonderful canonic literature of children’s writer Beatrix Potter; and finally to a classic Futurama episode where Bender reveals that, like a tortoise, if he rolls onto his back, he can’t physically get up again. The friendly tortoise teaches him to roll from side to side vigorously until finally the force flips him upright. By the end of the episode, the show’s lovable metallic antihero is able to overcome his weakness AND save the robot population from a dastardly death at the hands of the Nixon administration.

OK, I promise I’ll stop being sidetracked by edible greens, low-brow culture and an honest day’s work, and I’ll try to stay up-to-date with the program.

So, image generators … I’m not sure that I can find a place in my daily tasks for pavement graffiti and Simpsons avatars, but I had fun nonetheless when I had a play with several of the generators suggested on the post for Task 7. Most of them were pretty easy to use, as long as the nasty flashing banner ads don’t induce a seizure …

Here’s my Image Chef product (with apologies to Bob Dylan for the timely but unclear iteration of his worthy text):

I found this website very easy to use; it offered me the option of copying and pasting the code into my blog (as I’ve done here), or clicking a shortcut button that would automatically post the image to WordPress on my behalf. As I like to be in control of what’s published here in my name, I chose to do it myself.

Another tool turns a photo into a text file (what a clever concept!), although I recommend that you use an image with strong shapes and contrast levels, like a picture of you or your animal companion. You can download the text to a plain text (.txt) file, or link to it like this. The original photo is another from the Yarra Valley, and resides in my Flickr photostream. I can’t for the life of me remember the faithful dog’s name, but he followed us everywhere and even guarded the door at night. His mate Toby the sheepdog, in the absence of sheep, regularly tried to round up the resident alpacas and copped a spit in the eye and a swift kick for his troubles. This is the lovely farm/vineyard/holiday unit where we stayed and I highly recommend it.

As you can see, it helps you make your own emo, and they’re interactive (which is more than you can say of most emos, who are frankly too hungry and too busy writing bad poetry to do very much …) Unfortunately the save and copy features don’t seem to be working, but you can still have a play nonetheless.

Oh, and on a final note, in case you saw the title of this post and thought I’d explain it, Generation Y concept doesn’t exist. Neither does ‘Generation X’, ‘Baby Boomer’ or ‘Depression Era miser’. People are just people. Yes, nurture does have a tangible effect on our development, but ultimately we’re governed by our own natures, our own values and desires, regardless of the decade in which we were born.